INSTITUTE INDEX: Will Congress restore the Voting Rights Act?

Congressional Democrats are pushing for legislation to restore provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013, leading to a raft of restrictive state voting laws. (Graphic from VRA for Today.)

Date on which the U.S. Supreme Court in its Shelby County v. Holder ruling disabled Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required states with a history of voter discrimination — most of them in the South — to get federal pre-approval for any elections changes: 6/25/2013

Following the Shelby decision, number of states previously covered by federal pre-approval requirements that passed or implemented new voting restrictions: 8

Date on which a federal trial began over North Carolina's new voting law, which its Republican-controlled legislature passed a month after Shelby and is considered the nation's most restrictive: 7/13/2015

Date on which a bipartisan group of Congress members introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 (H.R. 3899) to restore some legal protections Shelby took away: 1/16/2014

Under that bill, number of voting rights-related violations a state would have had to rack up in order to be subjected to federal pre-approval requirements: 5

Number of states that bill's pre-approval formula would have applied to, all of them in the South: 4*